Despite Google, we still need good libraries

GEORGE KEREVAN

GOOGLE, with whom I spend more time than with my loved ones, is planning to put the contents of the world’s greatest libraries on line, including the Bodleian in Oxford and those of Harvard and Stanford in America. Part of me is ecstatic at the thought of all that information at my fingertips (assuming my mouse is not greasy, or the damned computer is not flashing incomprehensible "error" messages). Another part of me is nostalgic, because I think physical libraries, book-lined and cathedral-quiet, are a cherished part of civilisation we lose at our cultural peril.

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It may well be that public demand and technical change mean we no longer need the dense neighbourhood network of local libraries of yore. But our culture, local and universal, does demand serious city libraries where one can find science, history, reference texts, foreign-language works and art books - precisely the material that is too expensive for the ordinary person to buy, and for the most part too complex to find on-line. Such facilities are worth funding publicly because the return in informed citizenship, civic pride and enhanced skills is far in excess of the money spent. Better a few good public libraries than a host of tatty community centres. City libraries also have that undervalued resource - the trained librarian. The ultimate Achilles’ heel of the internet is that it presents every page of information as being equally valid, which is of course nonsense. The internet is cluttered with false information, or just plain junk. The city library, with its collection honed and developed by experts, is a guarantee of the quality and veracity of the information contained therein, in a way that Google can never provide.